Yahoo makes gains in US search market share at Google's expense

Ever since Mozilla announced it will be dropping Google as the default search engine for its browser Firefox and going for Yahoo! instead, everyone was waiting for the statistics to see how it would impact the search giants.

Statcounter was the first one to publish such data, and according to its figures, Google's search marketshare has dropped under 75 per cent for the first time since 2008. And Yahoo was the one to profit from it.

"January saw Yahoo further increase the gain it made in US search share last month, according to the latest data from independent website analytics provider, StatCounter.

"Google fell below 75 per cent in the US for the first time since StatCounter Global Stats began recording data“, Statcounter says.

The data shows Google gradually dropping in the period from November 2014 to January 2015, and Yahoo gaining momentum, while Bing mostly remained flat.

Statcounter's CEO Aodhan Cullen said some analysts expected a drop in Yahoo share, as Firefox users switched back to Google.

"Some analysts expected Yahoo to fall in January as a result of Firefox users switching back to Google. In fact Yahoo has increased US search share by half a percentage point," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "It will be fascinating to see if these gains continue."

StatCounter says that it is only Firefox users responsible for the change in US search share. "When we removed Firefox usage from the US search data, Yahoo's gains and Google's losses were erased," commented Cullen.

"This highlights the importance of the default search option and the significance of the upcoming Safari search deal for the major players."